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    The Shortfall: Owning the Challenge of Ministry Funding
    The Shortfall: Owning the Challenge of Ministry Funding
    The Shortfall: Owning the Challenge of Ministry Funding
    Ebook115 pages3 hours

    The Shortfall: Owning the Challenge of Ministry Funding

    By Christopher J. H. Wright, James Cousins and John Stott

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    About this ebook

    Inadequate funding remains one of the most significant challenges facing Christian ministries around the world. Yet who bears responsibility for this deficiency?

    Chris Wright, in conversation with James Cousins, challenges Christians to recognize that the problem of insufficient funding does not belong to those experiencing the shortfall but to those entrusted by God with the means to alleviate it. Combining John Stott’s The Grace of Giving and Chris Wright’s The Gift of Accountability, two classics on generosity and financial integrity, along with a brand new reflection, this book encourages readers to think critically about the problem itself.

    Together, these three works form a powerful treatise on Christian generosity, stewardship, and financial responsibility, questioning and transforming long-held beliefs around Christian giving. The Shortfall serves as a reminder that our resources belong to God, and we will be held accountable for how we choose to steward them.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLangham Global Library
    Release dateJan 31, 2021
    ISBN9781839730962
    The Shortfall: Owning the Challenge of Ministry Funding
    Author

    Christopher J. H. Wright

    Christopher J. H. Wright es director internacional de Langham Partnership International, donde tomó el cargo que ocupó John R. W. Stott durante treinta años. También sirve como presidente de la junta directiva del Grupo de Trabajadores del Comité Teológico Lausana y del Panel de recursos teológicos del fondo TEAR, una fundación líder en la ayuda para cristianos y desarrollo caritativo. Es autor de un sinnúmero de libros, incluyendo Conociendo a Jesús a través del Antiguo Testamento, Ética del Antiguo Testamento para log hijos de Dios, y el galardonado La Misión de Dios. Chris y su esposa, Luz, tienen cuatro hijos y cinco nietos.

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      Book preview

      The Shortfall - Christopher J. H. Wright

      Preface

      This little book has a rather varied history. Part 2 originated as an exposition by John Stott of 2 Corinthians 8–9 entitled, Ten Principles of Christian Giving. It was first delivered at The Gathering in San Diego in 1998, then preached at All Souls Church, Langham Place, London, and published successively by Generous Giving, the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES), and Didasko Files. It continued to be a very popular little booklet for many years. It is reprinted here as part of this book by permission of the Literary Executors of John R. W. Stott.

      Part 3 originated as an exposition by Chris Wright of the same chapters, focusing not so much on the principles of Christian giving as on the accountability of those who handle the fruit of it – the actual money given. This exposition was first given at a conference of the Korean Global Mission Leaders Forum on the topic of Accountability in Mission, held at the Overseas Ministries Studies Center in New Haven, Connecticut, USA, in 2013. It was first published by Didasko Files in 2013.

      The combination of the two expositions by John Stott and Chris Wright was later published in 2016 by Hendrickson Publishers for the Lausanne Library, entitled The Grace of Giving: Money and the Gospel, and later still in 2019 as Money and the Gospel: Giving Money with Grace, Handling Money with Integrity, by Dictum Press. We gratefully acknowledge Julia Cameron’s kind co-operation in enabling these two expositions to be incorporated into this new book.

      Part 1, however, is a completely fresh and hitherto unpublished reflection. It arose from a conversation between Chris Wright and James Cousins, a Christian businessman in Northern Ireland. James shared with Chris his enthusiasm for the little green book as he called the Stott-Wright booklet described above, and he had given it widely to friends and colleagues in the business and professional world.

      However, he said, "There’s a problem with it. It talks about the solution: how Christians should be giving money, and how they should be handling money. But it doesn’t talk about the problem." James was referring to the problem of the shortfall in funding that so many Christian ministries and mission agencies face. And the real problem, James went on to explain, is not just who faces that shortfall, but who owns it. That is, who does God hold responsible to address that shortfall and do something about it? The shortfall, James insisted, should not be seen just as a problem for the ministries, but as a problem to be owned by those to whom God has entrusted the means to supply what is needed to solve it. Including himself.

      "We need to own the problem!" James concluded.

      Over some further conversations and email exchanges, with diagrams and charts, James explained his thinking further, accompanied by his friend Harry Robinson, executive director of One Another Ministries. Meanwhile Chris found that James’s perspectives resonated in his own mind with several strands of biblical texts and examples. Such a biblical foundation would sit very appropriately with the expositions of 1 and 2 Corinthians in the little green book. So the idea emerged that Chris should write an additional section based on James’s thinking to stand alongside, and provide an essential context for, the earlier work of John Stott and himself. And that is how part 1, and indeed the concept for this new book, came into existence.

      Together James, Harry, and Chris pray that God will use this small offering to challenge and change some well-worn patterns of thought and practice in the whole area of Christian giving. And we’d like to think that John Stott would have given his approval to this further lease of life for one of the many gems in his vast literary legacy.

      Chris Wright and James Cousins

      May 2020

      Part 1

      The Problem of the Shortfall

      Chris Wright with James Cousins

      Introduction

      Why is it that so much Christian mission and ministry seems to lack adequate funding? Why does it seem that those who have wonderful visions and plans for the work God has given them to do in serving the kingdom of God and engaging in all kinds of gospel-centred activities so often find that their income falls short of their budgets, let alone their visions?

      Later in this book, we will see just how clearly the Bible teaches that Christian giving always should be a response to God’s grace to us in the gospel. It is because we have received so much from God in Christ – so immeasurably much – that we should be motivated to respond with generous giving to the Lord and his work. But if Christian giving is a response to the gospel, why is it (to repeat) that so much gospel ministry seems to lack adequate funding? Why is there so often a shortfall between the vision that God gives to agencies of Christian mission and the resources to fulfil that vision? And whose problem is that shortfall? These are the questions we address in part 1.

      1. Funding Christian Mission

      There are many forms of ministry and mission. That is to say there are multiple ways in which Christians can serve God by serving others, multiple ways in which they participate in God’s mission of bringing healing and reconciliation to his whole creation through Christ (Eph 1:9–10). Ministry and mission, in general terms, embrace the whole of life, including our homes and families, our vocation and work in the so-called secular world, all our relationships and engagement in society, under the Lordship of Christ. In that fully biblical sense, ministry is far wider than the work of those we ordain as ministers, and mission is far wider than the calling of those we send as missionaries. All disciples of the Lord Jesus are called into all kinds of ministry and mission in every area of life in the world – and some are called into particular forms of ministry and mission that need to be financially supported by other believers within the fellowship of the church. It is this latter group that we are thinking of in this section. But it is important to recognize that all of us, whether paid by the church or not, are committed to ministry and mission in the name of Christ at the very heart of our identity and role as Christians in God’s world.

      Financial support for Christian mission agencies comes in a number of different patterns, partly depending on the nature of the agency. Let’s survey some of the ways that Christian mission is funded.

      Some agencies facilitate the sending of large numbers of people into cross-cultural mission – whether for direct evangelism and church planting or a wide range of other work that embodies the gospel and is done in the name of Christ, such as in medicine and health; education; poverty and debt relief; community development; engineering; creation care; advocacy and action for the enslaved, trafficked, or imprisoned; conflict resolution and reconciliation; and many more. Other agencies require less personnel but are heavily invested in projects and initiatives that require funding, such as publication of Christian literature, infrastructure needs in health and education, clean water, and so

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